I am committed to making what I say, what I write, be honoring to who and what I write about. I am equally committed to throwing out my tether. I chafe at hiding, at pretending, at avoiding, at covering, at running. It feels chicken. Dishonest. I don't like it. It makes me angry. I'm angry here a lot lately and have to bundle it up in gauze that leaks bloody mess and lay it at my Father's feet, sometimes several times a day. I say this to you because I don't want this green dress and big dimpled smile to fool you into thinking I'm any different than you are. My writing is a slice of who I am and I use it to try and create an accurate picture of a girl growing up still into who Her Daddy intends her to be. I open my window so you can hear my life. I do it for hope for us both. Because while I'm angry? I'm still laughing real laughter and grocery shopping and washing my hair and planting seeds in kids' lives and checking the mail box and getting irritated at my girl and the point is this. Car wrecks, emotional or otherwise, feel purposeless and cause damage to fenders and legs and you find yourself looking up and informing God that, in fact, you disagree with what just happened and why didn't You keep it away from me?? I have this feeling I'm not alone in that. And I wanted you to know I'm right here with you.
So back to Beth, my friend from afar who so many times cracks me over the head with that not so velvet hammer of hers, has a series on living audaciously. This morning she tells us about a man who was exhausted and came in to demand his stew right here, right now and yes go ahead and take my birthright and give me my bowl, which, in bible times was no small thing. Mind you, this man wasn't hungry. He was tired. The desperate kind. The kind that makes you lose sight. And here's the clincher. My friend, Beth, looks me right in the camera's eye and asks...."Tell me. What's your stew?" What is is that distracts you, trips you up, makes your car tires burn rubber? And here friends, is why I'm angry.
"For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by Whom we cry, "Abba! Father!". I got scared. And scared exhausted me. And I shackled myself to that fear. And sold off my 'sonhood' to eat some leftover stew. I allowed someone to steal my audacity, my audacious living that I had when I crashed into their path. Their opinion of me, their fear, their hiddenness, their denial became my stew and it shut my mouth and I found myself cowering under their porch rather than standing on the shoulders of Who put me in front of their car to be the Him in me.
And I am angry about it. I'm angry at me, angry at my lost friend for treatment undeserved. But I'm most angry at my enemy, who is the secret, scoffing, snickering, drooling author of the fear that drives this anger. I look in the mirror at my still wet hair, no make up, my hoodie hiding my tiny frame, making me look like a sniveling little ferret. I laugh at myself. And then I'm angry again. Just like that. And I go in and snap at my girl, just woken up as I type this. Over nothing. Over everything I've written here, which has nothing to do with her. I will listen ten times over, if I have to, to Beth reminding me to seize audacious living for the One Who rescued me. Wet ferret head and all. I will not be silenced or intimidated or punished or shunned into living less. I will not be shackled to fear. I am adopted, once and for all. I will fall all over myself stupid and bumbling but I will continue to invest and risk it. I will live; not for my kids or my animals or good causes or what others think or don't think at all about me, not for the sake of spite. I will live. Because I am audaciously His. I will not rewrite my stew recipe again. And I will keep my dimples.
Beth Moore, Living Audaciously
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